It’s the Tank’s Fault!

Well OK, he didn’t say it was the Tanks fault… but I’m good at taking a phrase out of context and trying to ram that down your throat. He did basically say that Tanks DPS is currently OP.

They should be TPS machines, not DPS machines.

Let’s face it, no one has to grind dailies in their tank spec any more (well, unless the off spec is heals I guess… Mmmm then a gain that isn’t so bad.. I was doing higher dps than the tank and one DPS in HVH the other night… yeah I was meant to be healing … Sssshhhh!)

Anyway, I believe…

No, I know, that one of the reasons that DPS & damage is so low for some dps toons is that the tanks are insane…

Well their damage output is insane.

No, my 1st statement was probably correct..

Tanks are INSANE!

Go on.. Nerf 'em!

Even my tank buddy Vikingmetal was putting DPS to shame, from around level 70.

He’d rush in, AOE tank the trash, the mobs would be down to 1/2 health before the DPS caught up.

God help you if you are DPS with a cast time… It’s all over before your spell/ability leaves your hand.

I know Gnomeaggedon’s given up any concept of a rotation now. I’m lucky if I can living bomb one target and get a couple of Blizzard ticks off before most of the mobs are dead.

Frostfire Bolt?

More like casting the Frostfire after the horse has bolted.

If I could get one off I’m sure it would hurt… And scorch really doesn’t cut it unless I get an instant pyro out of it… Which I do… Often… It usually pops as the last mob goes down and expires before I reach the next pack…

No Screenshots, but it happened!

Case in point.

I ran a stock-standard-boring-old-been-there-done-that heroic the other day, I was stumbling along at 2k dps… now I KNOW I am worth more than that. Unfortunately, so was everyone else.. including the tank… lots more. It’s hard to even cheat the numbers with Mage AoE when the tank has nearly destroyed the mobs purely by pulling them.

TreeHuggerDave then convinced me to try out FoS.. yeah right.. well OK, I’ll give it a go…

This group was much more balanced, and lo and behold, I am doing mid 4k dps. Things lived long enough to get a score on the board!

THB I don’t mind tanks beating me on the meters… I do mind when it’s because I am taking dirt baths.

I died on the 1st few pulls of a heroic the other day.

Mr. Offspec (a mate of mine) asks:

“Were you using AoE?”

“just living bomb” I replied.

“Theres your problem right there!”

ummm, I don’t think it’s my problem if I living bomb one mob put of 3 (it has low damage until the 12th second), scorch the skull and cast 1/2 a frostfire bolt before the tank loses control of. Mob that 2 shots me.

Tanks can DPS to their hearts content – as long as they tank 1st.
Same as Healers… DPS away – so long as no one dies from your neglect

The issue I don’t think is low level dungeon meters being the problem, it’s the attitudes tanks having good dps creates. I’d have to really go digging but tanks were given more dps sometime in bc so they could feel like they were contributing more than just taking damage.

But in BC it was a different game, unless you were a very overgeared pally doing an easier heroic (shattered halls anyone?) Tanks generally could only pull and hold 2-3 things at once, things were meanner, and the dps and heallers were doing their jobs -and- doing crowd control because the tank just wasn’t able to survive without them. So tanks didn’t feel like real tanks, couldn’t make every mob look at him at once and survive, etc… so they gave tanks a little more utility, a little damage.

These days where it’s not unheard of for tanks to hold 20+ mobs and not die, CC is a thing of the past, and the sheer difference in ilevel 251 gear and ilevel 200 is so ridiculous that a fresh 80 struggling to pull 2k dps is nearly doubled by the tank. It encourages dps to not learn their class, andn feel entirely undervalued.

The other attitude it creates is that tank dps is important. I know a warrior who is part of a fairly serious raiding guild, and they decided after 4 years of service to them, the warrior tank would be benched for a deathknight tank. Not because the warrior couldn’t create threat, in fact it had the highest tps in their guild, no the warrior didn’t lack survivability, sitting at nearly 44khp unbuffed and roughly 40% mitigation even in icecrown. No the warrior got benched because the DK could do 2k more dps, which eased the timer on festergut.

….the tank was tanking, and wasn’t good enough because his dps was lower?

…this sort of issue should never happen, but apparently it’s becoming more regular.

So the easiest way to make dps feel more important while keeping the ‘If I apply enough force, I don’t have to think’ bodybuilder moto, is to make it so dps are the only ones who can dps, that keeping a tank alive is not going to win a run, that if all the dps die, you might as just wipe it up because the trees .9 dps, and the tanks .1 dps just aren’t going to take loken from 50% to 0

The way I see it, tanks aren’t overpowered but simple overgeared for heroics. The reason we even go into heroics is to get gear to prepapre us for raids. Am I right? So if a tank goes in there who is mostly prepared for these raids and he simply wants his daily frost emblems then of course he is going to be doing a lot of damage. I’m sure if you throw him in there with equally geared DPSers he probably won’t be doing the same amount of DPS as them (and that place will be cleared in record time). But the situation with this new random dungeon group thingie makes it so that this overgeared tank gets thrown in there with a bunch of fresh 80 DPSers and like Holly said, the difference between ilvl 200 and ilvl 251 gear is immense.

So the problem here isn’t an overpowered tank but an unbalanced LFG system where you mix overgeared people with undergeared people.

I can’t speak from experience since I haven’t been in a raid yet (I’m a fresh 80) but I’m sure that a raid-ready tank won’t be doing the same DPS as the DPSers in his raid.

First, Holly, thank you for an outstanding comment on this. Gnomeaggedon nailed my opinion on this issue, a bit tongue in cheek, but you broke down exactly why I feel that we’ve outgrown the “I’m a tank and need to have DPS too” stage of tanking.

Yes, in Kara days in BC it was a different story. And just like you say, Holly, things are now drastically different in terms of how tanks work. I can realistically expect to hold unlimited numbers of simple melee trash mobs… easily. I can expect to be able to grab and hold all sorts of targets, and CC is now optional to forgotten.

So… why do I need to do so much DPS, too?

And yes, Briiseis, I agree that the attitudes are exacerbated by the LFD gear balancing tool. If a raiding ICC tank in top gear were prevented from ever grouping in Violet Hold with brand new 80s in blues and iLevel 200s, it would be less apparent.

But the core issue is still that the paradigm of roles has changed. As was said, right now, all three DPS can die and it’s “Keep the tank alive to finish the kill of the group”.

To play off of Gnomers’ DPS in .2 milliseconds issue, I get numerous people asking me, “How the hell do I generate enough aggro in the first .2 seconds of a pull to counteract all these damn idiots who unload all out AOE as soon as they see me head towads the mobs? I’m tired of laser chickens pulling something off of me on every run.”

And my answer is usually, “Find yourself some friends who aren’t morons and know what a threat meter is, and who stop thinking that they can unload all out AoE dps before you even reach the mobs. Find people who know how to paly the game.”

If the game is meant to be enjoyed equally, then finding ways to remove unneccesary stress is good, right? And finding ways of highlighting the value people feel they bring to the group is good, right?

So why not give the tank greater threat generation, enough to grab things and hold them easily no matter what DPS is put out by that boomkin… but the tank just doesn’t do DPS.

Make it a switch. Much like Paladins have their Righteous Fury… give all tanks the “boost threat x 100%, reduce DPS x100%” button, and if you want to go solo an isntance as a tank, well, if you’re alone or with a low level buddy, just leave the button off. If yo’re tanking the serious shit, then you put it on, and hold threat like Samson, but you’ve got no freaking DPS. You NEED your DPS buddies to be solid to win through the day.